This Week With My Coleco ADAM 9708.24
by Richard F. Drushel drushel@apk.net
Administrivia.

Hello,  everyone!  After  a  long hiatus (since January  1997,  I 
think), I am finally able to resume writing these weekly articles 
about what I've been doing with my Coleco ADAM computer. My topic 
buffer  is fuller than ever;  my personal buffer is  also  fuller 
than  ever,  but  I'll try to set aside enough time each week  to 
keep  these  articles coming out.  The general  reaction  to  the 
TWWMCA  series has been,  "We don't always understand what you're 
talking  about,  but we like having the articles around to  read; 
we've  missed them this spring and summer." I can't promise  that 
you'll  understand them any better,  but I do hope to  have  them 
around.   Since  tomorrow  begins the first day of classes at Case  
Western Reserve University in Cleveland,  Ohio (where I'm teaching 
5 days a week this year),  and I'm still trying to get a few last-
minute things ready,  this article will be somewhat short. Future 
articles will be longer, I'm sure 

ADAMcon 09

 The Ninth International Coleco ADAM Computer Convention.
ADAMcon 09 was held 14-17 August 1997 in Grand Rapids,  Michigan, 
hosted by Bob and Judy Slopsema, representing the Southern Michi 
gan  ADAM  Users  Group  (SMAUG),   which  has  no   non-Slopsema
 membership, I believe :-) I heard Bob conclude that there were 30 
official  delegates,  and  a few more walk-ins  and  non-delegate 
spouses.  Though  I  don't  have rigorous  historical  attendance 
figures at hand, my impresssion is that this was the best showing 
since ADAMcon 06 in Sarasota,  Florida (October 6-9, 1994). As an 
aside,  I think it would be nice for someone to collect and  pub 
lish the complete attendance lists for all the ADAMcons;  then we 
could put an end to the bickering I've heard between various past 
ADAMcon chairs about who had what attendance.

Until  the end of July,  I wasn't sure whether or not I'd be able to 
attend ADAMcon 09 at all.  Some emergency travel expenses,  as well  
as the need to save money for a new car,  were  significant 
constraints. Fortunately, I was able to do some consul ting  work  
in July which provided the  necessary  funds.  As  it turned out,  
my going was what enabled 2 other people to go--Jean Davies  and 
 Pat  Williams from our  Cleveland  B.A.S.I.C.  users group.  Jean 
and Pat had originally planned on going together  in Jean's  van,  
sharing the driving (it's about 5 hours from Cleve land  to Grand 
Rapids).  Unfortunately,  a few weeks  before  the convention, Pat 
broke her right foot and was unable to drive; and Jean  felt that 5 
hours of driving was too much for her to handle alone.  Since  now  
I was able to go,  we all decided  to  travel together  in  my 
minivan (which we did,  with me  doing  all  the driving).

Dale  Wick  (dalew@truespectra.com)  has already written  a  nice 
objective  summary of all the sessions at ADAMcon 09  (posted  to 
the  Coleco ADAM Mailing List,  coladam-list@calum.csclub.uwater 
loo.ca),  so you might want to check that out to get an  overview 
of  the convention.  I'm just going to write about a few personal 
things of the sort that don't make it into the "official"  histo 
ries.  

All  throughout  ADAMCON 09 I was *tired*.  My brain  just wouldn't 
wake up.  Part of it was the killer work schedule I  had in the weeks 
before the convention,  but it was aggravated by the weather  and  
the  hotel air  conditioning  system.  The  weather outside  was 
coldish and rainy,  but inside the hotel it was war mish  and humid.  
The air conditioner kept my room cool  tempera ture-wise,  but  it 
didn't dehumidify the air,  so it still  felt stuffy  and warmish.  
Put 30 people and 12 heat-generating  ADAMs into one session suite 
and it was really stuporous. This isn't an especial knock at the 
hotel; I think every hotel air conditioning system  is the same way.  
In any case,  I felt myself dozing  off during sessions, much to my 
embarrassment.   I was also extremely frustrated that I couldn't clear 
out my head enough to do any serious programming.  I had intended to 
finally put  the user configuration module into the PC-based server  
side of  my ADAMserve serially-linked device driver system  (currently 
the  hardware configuration is static,  compiled-in).  Aside from 
about  30  minutes  of clear thinking,  in which  I  laid  out  a 
configuration  datafile  format and put the necessary hooks  into 
the server code,  I just couldn't concentrate enough to write any 
code. This was to the great disappointment of several people, I'm 
sure.  This  is  the first ADAMcon of the ones I've been  to  (04 
through  09) that I didn't get any useful programming  done,  and 
i'm not happy about it.

I gave 2 sessions at ADAMcon 09.  The first session was on Friday 
night, talking about ADAMserve and some of the inside history and 
artifacts  I had obtained from Randy Hyde (founder and  president 
of Lazer Microsystems,  the company which wrote SmartBASIC, ADAM 
calc,  the  the  ADAM part of CP/M 2.2) and  Joel  Lagerquist  (
a programmer  at Lazer Microsystems,  who worked on the above three
programs). For those of you who remember the TWWMCA articles from 
Fall 1996,  Randy Hyde is my "mystery man". I still have to write 
up  the text of our E-mail correspondence;  it should  appear  in 
TWWMCA this fall.  

The second session was Sunday afternoon, talk ing  about  converting 
PowerPaint image files to RGB  TIFFs,  the ColecoVision  and ADAM 
emulators by Marcel de  Kogel  (m.dekogel @student.utwente.nl),  and  
my LEGO robotics course at CWRU.  The latter seemed to be of greatest 
interest to the audience, since I had  brought with me an actual 
autonomous LEGO robot  capable  of robust obstacle avoidance, and I 
demoed it in the hallway outside the session room. The tenuous link 
of my robot course to the ADAM is that the robot controller board is 
a 68HC11,  a later relative of  the 6801 microcontrollers used in 
ADAMnet peripheral devices; and thus, in principle, one could write 
suitable software for the 68HC11  board  such that it could function 
as an  ADAMnet  device (meaning  you  could  control  a robot  from  
an  ADAM,  a  nifty thought).   The audience seemed appreciative of my 
sessions, but I personally was quite worried about them,  because 
(unlike previous  sessions at previous ADAMcons) I had not rigorously 
prepared the presenta tions  ahead of time.  I sort of just winged it. 
 Dale Wick  said that  was okay,  that the material lent itself to a 
more informal presentation (unlike assembly language programming,  
which  needs considerable  forethought to manage the complexity in a  
beginner setting).  I,  however,  felt  like a one-legged tightrope 
walker over Niagara Falls without a net. If the audience never picked
 up on my anxiety,  though,  it must mean I'm getting to be a  better 
teacher :-)

I  must comment on the food at ADAMcon 09:  it was uniformly out 
standing,  in  quality and in quantity.  Anybody who went to  bed 
hungry,  especially after the sumptuous all-you-can-eat  smorgas 
board for brunch on Sunday,  has only himself to blame.  I  can't 
speak  for  ADAMcons 01-03,  but my vote is that 09 had the  best 
food  of any ADAMcon 04-09.  
I also have to mention the fine work done by the de facto  equip 
ment  manager at ADAMcon 09,  Bob's son Doug.  Doug kept all  the 
ADAMs  (and some of the PCs,  too) running at peak form,  had any 
needed  cable or adapter or software ready at  hand,  and  didn't 
break anything that I saw :-) At the banquet Sunday, I asked that 
he be recognized with a round of applause for his efforts,  and I 
repeat that request here. Nice job, Doug! 
Jean, Pat, and I left for Cleveland Monday morning about 7:30 AM. We  
made it back safely and in time for me to see my wife  before she had 
to go to work that afternoon.  My "travelling box" (which has attended 
every ADAMcon since 05,  the "hard" one to get to in Salt Lake City,  
Utah) is still sitting in my basement with ADAMs unpacked. Hopefully 
this week I'll be able to get my ADAMs set up again (we'll see how 
busy classes are this week).

See you again next week!  Rich Drushel
